Texts From Gotham
by Serenitychan13
Summary: They're back! A series of 1000 word ficlets inspired by Gotham. This one takes its particular inspiration from the tumblr textsfromthegcpd - Texts From Last Night superimposed over screenshots from the television show. Rule of Funny is firmly in place here, some of the pieces bordering on crackfics. Rating may go up.
1. Drunk With Cats

(352) "I wasn't that drunk."  
(727) "You were calling my cat 'Simba' and holding him up in the air."

Dark, bloodshot eyes cracked open and immediately scrunched shut again with the assault of early morning light. Even that time he had the flu when he was six years old, Bruce Wayne could not remember ever feeling this sick in his entire young life. He forced himself out of his utterly wrecked bed and caught a look at himself in the mirror. _Ugh,_ he thought instantly. Last night socked him in the chest like a sucker punch. He felt something horrible creeping up the back of his throat and before he could put much conscious thought into it, dashed to his bathroom. Seconds later, his digestive system made a sound attempt to turn itself inside out.

 _Hrgp! Rrrrrugh!_

"Dude, are you remotely okay?" a female voice interrupted Bruce's feverish upchucking.

He had stopped questioning long ago how she kept getting in, but the heir to Wayne Enterprises did not feel at all relieved, for once, by his friend Selina's presence. His head felt like a cinderblock as he lifted it from nearly touching the commode and wiped his mouth on last night's shirtsleeve. Selina Kyle leaned casually on the door frame of the bathroom, one eyebrow almost disappearing into her hair. She wrinkled her nose as Bruce doubled over again.

"What _is_ that anyway – mac and cheese?" she asked way more nonchalantly than Bruce felt she should.

The young Bruce Wayne stared morosely into the commode at everything he reckoned he'd eaten in the last 72 hours.

" _Urgh_ ," he gurgled at her. "Could be?"

The events of last night filtered back into his head like water dripping through a paper towel, causing his guts to flipflop even more. He ran over in his head the list of people to whom he now owed an apology, possibly in writing. Mr. Fox, definitely… Bruce shuddered at the thought of looking him in the face after shouting "ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT!?" at him. Dr. Thompkins would probably just laugh off his drunken marriage proposal, possibly bring it up at his future wedding. That, he could live with, he decided. Detective Gordon… might well actually have a warrant out for his arrest at this point, he realized. And who even was that nut in the glasses talking to himself?

"Hell of a night last night, huh?" Selina remarked, again entirely too chill for Bruce's comfort.

He straightened up and reached for a roll of toilet paper. Another wet burp forced its way up and out but didn't bring anything with it. Bruce wiped his face on a large wad of toilet paper, embarrassed that his eyes streamed with tears from violent hurling. A few deep breaths and he was pretty sure nothing else was on its way up. Sniffling and determinedly refusing to acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation, he straightened up and attempted to act natural.

"Uh, yeah," he tried not to let his voice shudder as he replied. "That… That was fun!"

This time, both of Selina's eyebrows threatened to vanish into her curly bangs. She tilted her head to the side and cocked one hip out in her "badass" pose. Bruce turned on the spot, reached out to flush the commode without looking, then hid the vomit on his sleeve by tucking his arm behind his back. Selina looked unconvinced by his "too cool" act. Her head tilted to the other side as she looked him up and down. Bruce remained fully clothed from last night, but only missing one shoe, and his hair stuck in all directions.

"Do you even remember anything?" she demanded, squinting her eyes at him. "Have you ever been drunk before? I don't think I've ever seen anybody so wasted!"

Bruce's face wavered between gray and green in color and he visibly attempted not to sway where he stood. He ran his free hand through his hair, forcing it into more disarray than it had been rather than, in fact, fixing anything. When he withdrew that hand, he noticed several stark red scratches that appeared to have ceased bleeding within only a few hours. This puzzled him, but he stuck his hand in his pocket attempting to look calm.

"I was fine," he lied, not even a little bit convincingly. "I remember everything! We should do it again sometime!"

Selina rolled her eyes so hard Bruce swore he could hear it. She stepped forward into the bathroom and grabbed his hand out of his pocket, staring at the scratches in dismay. Bruce tried to tug his hand back but couldn't balance well enough without nearly falling on his backside. In fact, he nearly managed to pull Selina on top of him, but she kept her footing. Taking hold of a bit of his shoulder that didn't have some sort of _ick_ on it, she guided him to sit down on the edge of his bath tub.

"Again?" she repeated incredulously. "Once wasn't enough? You were _hammered_!"

Bruce sniffed hard and stared at her defiantly.

"I wasn't that drunk!" he denied, wincing at his own raised voice.

The street girl gave him the most withering look he had seen, second only to Alfred.

"You were calling my cat 'Simba' and holding him up in the air," she told him flatly. "That's actually why I'm here – now I can't find him."

At that moment, Alfred appeared in the doorway, eyeing the situation in the bathroom and choosing "later" as the time to say anything about it. Presently, he had more immediate problems to deal with – eighteen pointy problems, to be exact. He held out his right leg to the two teenagers, steadying himself on the doorjamb. An exceptionally angry orange tabby clung tenaciously to his trousers, claws and teeth sinking into the flesh underneath. The cat glared at all three humans and growled menacingly. Selina looked exasperated as she stared from Bruce to Alfred and back again. Unfailingly calm and polite, the butler addressed the teenagers.

"Excuse me, Miss Kyle, but does _this_ belong to you?"


	2. 604 - Trivia Night

(604) "That was an excessively violent trivia night."

Lee Thompkins had made probably far more than her share of questionable life choices, but all of them seemed to pale in comparison to what she'd gotten herself into last night. She sat at a rickety kitchen table with an ice pack over her left eye and three broken fingernails under Band-Aids. Across the same table sat a sulking Edward Nygma with tape holding his broken glasses together and a busted lip. Both of them nursed hangovers, various physical bumps and bruises, and injured dignity. With her icy stare and his frozen glower, the terrible coffee produced most of the heat in the room.

"I keep telling you, either learn to throw a solid punch or let me take care of it!" Lee pushed his buttons again, wincing as she pressed the ice pack harder into her eye. "Or, here's a thought, try not getting so worked up about the simplest little things!"

A normally-perfectly-manicured eyebrow with a spectacular beer-bottle cut across it arched contemptuously at her. Edward Nygma, maybe the Riddler, sucked in his coffee between his teeth, making as much noise as humanly possible – something that normally drove them both bananas. He had so much that he felt like saying, but for some reason he restrained himself. If he let one word out now, he wouldn't stop until he had shouted himself hoarse. Lee narrowed her one good eye at him, having neglected to clean her ruined makeup off her face.

Both parties had been sitting at this same kitchen table since dragging themselves back into Ed's place at close on 4:30 in the blessed AM, still in their clothes from last night. The pair reeked of beer, cigarette smoke, and other bar-oriented odors they would rather not think about. Lee's black rayon dress had finally begun to dry, making her feel dirtier than she had to start with. Ed had what had clearly been a grasshopper splattered across his shirtfront and open jacket. Neither of them had decided to begin the race to the shower yet.

"And here I thought women appreciated it when men displayed a measure of control over a situation," he spat back acidly. "Excuse me."

Lee rolled her eyes and clenched her jaw at how badly that hurt.

"It's not control if you get your ass kicked by a guy with a prop lightsaber!" she shouted, startling them both and then lowering her voice to a reasonable volume. "And a replica of Luke's from 'A New Hope' at that? That's just _sad!_ "

Ed growled and then flinched – his lip still burned. They had been tied in first place and the last question of the night had been a "guess the closest number". The other hitch? To make the tiebreaker fair, the topic had been randomized and both teams groaned when the announcer said "Disney." The question had been "How many tiles make up the outside of Spaceship Earth?" Edward had sat there, trying to picture the golf-ball-like exterior in his head. Lee hadn't been to Florida since she was nine, so she shrugged. The rest of the de facto team assembled at their table tossed numbers back and forth. However, a girl from the other team stood up and screamed "ELEVEN THOUSAND!" The announcer looked mind-blown but had to give the tied team a chance to answer.

"Er…" Ed had stammered, incredibly uncomfortable at his own lack of certainty. "Twenty-thousand?"

It turned out the other girl had been within 324 tiles of being exactly right – the answer was 11,324 tiles made up the outside of Spaceship Earth. Their team head had been a smug little bastard all night, and his level of intoxication gave him the bright idea to get in Ed's face after the victory. Lee had just watched over her martini glass as the two of them exchanged words. Lightsaber Guy, however, threw the first punch when he didn't understand exactly what Ed had called him. He missed, but then again, Ed hadn't been able to throw a punch since first grade. His badly-made fist had, however, connected messily with the guy's jaw, crunching his own knuckles worse than the guy's face.

After that, drunken pandemonium ensued.

"How was I supposed to know he could hit that hard with that thing?" Ed demanded of Lee back in the kitchen. He studied the bloodstains soaking through the medical tape wrapped around his pale knuckles. "Besides… he started it."

Lee smacked her empty coffee cup down on the table.

"I don't care who started it!" she snapped, readjusting her ice pack. "You're the RIDDLER – you're supposed to be Gotham's most notorious criminal _genius_ or… whatever! You're not supposed to be going off like a twelve-year-old and starting a full-out bar fight over STAR WARS TRIVIA!"

Somebody in an adjacent apartment banged on the wall.

"HEY, CAN IT!" yelled an angry male voice. "DECENT PEOPLE GOTTA GO TO WORK IN THE MORNING!"

Both Lee and Ed cast their eyes in the direction of the disturbance, relieved to have a mutual antagonist besides each other. When they dragged their gazes back across the table and made eye contact again, the anger melted away somewhat. Ed looked Lee up and down, smiling in spite of himself at how silly she looked with a big blue gooey fake-ice pack over her eye and smudged lipstick. All right, if you cornered him, he found it pretty attractive that she could deck a grown man with a solid right hook. Lee, in return, smirked at Ed's cockeyed, broken glasses and her handiwork in medical tape holding them tenuously together.

"Well," Lee announced finally. "That was an excessively violent trivia night."

The two cracked and laughed for several minutes.

"Shower?" Ed offered.

Lee sniffed and wrinkled her nose.

"Join me?" she counter-offered.

He nodded, unfolding himself from the kitchen chair and extending his hand to her.

"Thought you'd never ask," he agreed.

Still laughing, Lee jumped from the table and raced past him for the shower – Ed, briefly stunned, followed.


	3. 612 - Booty Call

(612) "I told the cop I was late for a booty call. He still gave me a ticket but he wrote his number on it."

It had been a long time since Detective Jim Gordon had simply pulled someone over for a traffic violation, and if he trusted any of the uniforms to do their jobs, he'd have left it to them. However, the young woman had been going at least 25 over, and he could see her phone in her hand. He turned on his unmarked car's lights and siren and pulled back into traffic in pursuit. Other cars got out of the way quickly when they figured out who was actually in the crosshairs. Jim watched the young woman's eyes flick up to her mirror, and saw her mouth visibly form the words "Oh fuck!" She dutifully pulled over and put her hands on the wheel.

"I'm so sorry!" the young woman blurted out as she rolled the window down.

Oh, Harvey wished he could see this, Jim thought. She was, as the older Irishman would say the kids said, a "regulation hottie." Honey-blonde hair hung down past her shoulders, held back with a pair of expensive sunglasses up on her head. She had bright blue-green eyes and a golden tan, highlighted by the fact that she had blushed several shades of red-bordering-on-purple. When she grinned nervously, she showed a becoming gap between her front teeth. As Jim tried to be discreet about looking her up and down while she fished for her license and registration, he couldn't help noticing her outfit.

Her top barely qualified as a top – more like glorified lingerie, a black satin camisole with a bodice made of mostly lace and little tiny strings for straps. This, she had tucked into a gray twill miniskirt that drew Jim's eye unintentionally-on-his-part down to black over-the-knee boots. She had the distinct appearance of having gotten dressed in a hurry, having all her makeup on but lipstick. Jim reached for the license and wad of registration papers in her outstretched hand.

"Frazier, Elizabeth?" Jim asked to confirm, trying to keep his voice as official as possible.

"I'm Frazier-comma-Elizabeth, yes sir!" she affirmed, chewing on her bottom lip and unable to keep the glint of distinct mischief out of her eyes. "Friends call me Beth!"

Jim cocked an eyebrow at her – most people this easygoing around cops in Gotham had a whole bundle of "something to hide."

"Mind telling me what you were going that fast for, then, Beth?" he attempted to ask off-handedly but failed.

This broke Ms. Frazier into only-partially-unexpected giggles. Her cheeks darkened further and she stared her suede-encased knees for a second. For a second, Jim wondered if he just had a nasty streak with emotionally unstable blondes, and maybe he should go ahead and call for backup now. Nah, Harvey would never let him live it down… Beth looked up at him with an adorably crooked grin – the left side of her lip curled up more than her right.

"So, it's like this…" she started, her face clearly telegraphing how far out on a limb she was about to go. "I was supposed to meet this guy like thirty minutes ago…"

She showed him a picture on her phone that she had obviously screenshotted from a hookup app. A shirtless young man with broad shoulders and shredded cargo shorts smiled up from the screen, lounging beside a beached kayak beside a mighty river. Jim had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes out loud.

"Officer, look, I've been on like a six-month dry spell and Cody and I had this amazing date last week that we had to cut short when some asshole blew up the gas station down the street…" she rambled at him, still brandishing the picture on the phone. "I'm really, _really_ sorry I was speeding – I just got excited! Okay, maybe _excited_ isn't quite the right word for it…"

She looked up at him from halfway under her lashes, biting her lower lip in what he assumed she thought was a flirtatious manner. Jim couldn't help feeling in a better mood about the whole thing – this had to be the most benign interaction he'd had with a member of the public in months. The warmth in her voice and the earnestness in her eyes rendered her story plausible.

"Okay, okay!" Jim had to laugh. "Now, going that fast, I still have to cite you but… good luck, okay?"

He hadn't even bothered to run her license for outstanding warrants or current insurance or anything. Frankly, Jim Gordon had never been so glad for a routine traffic stop and couldn't be more grateful for the one right now if he tried. Fishing around in his coat, he found an old, wrinkled pad of citation sheets. Trying his best to keep his expression as neutral-bordering-on-stern as he possibly could, he scribbled on the pad outside of her line of sight. He couldn't wait to tell Harvey about this – you did just have to live a little, like the guy said! Ms. Frazier did actually look sorry when he handed her the yellow piece of paper and pocketed the pink carbon copy.

"Be safe, have fun," Jim told her, leaning against the car briefly and watching her eye the paper. "You're free to go, but slow down for me!"

Jim, with his face still schooled, turned to walk back to his car when he heard her voice.

"Slow down for you?" she repeated, her voice playful and solicitous at once. "Anytime!"

Whatever else happened for the rest of the day, Detective Jim Gordon would at least have something to grin about. He watched her pull away, visibly as careful as she could be. Before too terribly long, at exactly the speed limit, the car disappeared. Now back in his car, he checked himself out in his rear-view mirror. Yep, he told himself as he turned the key in the ignition, he still had it when he wanted to! If she actually gave him a call at some point, he could think later about the mild administrative violation.


	4. 817 - Glitter

(817) "Katie Perry lied, you can't just wake up and shake the glitter off your clothes."

"Ugh… ow…" groaned Ed, trying to lift an arm that felt like it weighed three times what it should have and falling off his present horizontal surface. He cracked his eyes open to realize he still had his glasses on, cockeyed though they might be, and all his clothes from last night… including his shoes. Oh no… His first attempt at sitting up manifested as more of a _flail_ , but he managed to right himself, casting about and realizing that yes, somehow, he had ended up back at his place. Secondly, he realized that every single thing about his person _itched._

"What in the…" he started, trying to straighten his glasses – they were hopelessly bent – and then checking himself over. "Oh my god."

Glitter. Glitter _everywhere._

Every inch of him, skin and clothing – even his hair! – somehow, between about 6pm last night and now, had ended up covered in glitter. The last thing he really remembered had been that girl with the goggles joining him onstage to spin the wheel. Clever little sprite, but he couldn't even remember what riddles he'd thrown her way, or if she'd answered them correctly. He supposed at some point he'd had at least one drink – more than one, if the sticky wet spot on his chest was any indication. Oh god, he hoped that was a spilled drink…

"You're gonna want to call that strip club and apologize," the voice of Lee Thompkins broke into his horrified reverie. "I've never seen anything like that in my life."

Ed pushed his glasses up and scrubbed at his face, trying to remove the glitter clumped into the corners of his eyes, blinking up from the floor. There stood the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, looking like she had slept like a baby, leaning casually against a wall in his bathrobe. Trying to get up proved futile, so Ed stayed put. Lee had that smile on her face that he had learned to somewhat fear – the rare smile that said she knew something he didn't. She strode over, removed his glasses for him, wiped the glitter on the hem of his pilfered bathrobe, and handed them back. As Ed surveyed the wreckage of his living room, last night came back to him in bits and pieces.

He could remember putting on a rather spectacular show in his own club, polishing off a grasshopper or two, then Lee suggesting a change of venue after. It had been about halfway through the ride between clubs that he recalled feeling a change come over him. For once, he had felt more spontaneous, freer, like perhaps he had meshed completely with the Riddler for a while. After that, the gaps – the spots in his memory that came up utterly blank – started. More than whole coherent moments, he remembered various sensory input. Flashes of color, the clashing scents of different perfumes, particularly loud music, and hands all over him and Lee both all washed over him.

"But… all the glitter?" Ed asked in Lee's general direction.

She actually laughed at him! Ed stared around his living room. Furniture other than the couch lay overturned but thankfully not broken. Trails of glittery footprints from no-one-else-but-his shoes cut figure-eights all over the floor, and every one of his rugs lay crumpled into piles where he'd kicked them. As with his clothing, glitter covered each horizontal surface in the room. His eyes bugged wide behind his glasses as he tried to piece together more than just "alcohol" and "glitter".

"Oh, just check your pockets," Lee told him, giggling into her coffee cup.

Wriggling a little to reposition himself, Ed stuck a hand into his trouser pocket and then yanked it back as if something had bitten him. One of his infamous leather gloves had been coated from fingertips to mid-palm in glitter, mostly rainbow and pink. As if he had pulled a spider out of his pocket, Ed yelped and flung the offending glove as far across his living room as he could get it. Lee smirked and sidestepped it easily.

"You were sprinkling it over people's heads like a baptism of stupid every time they got a riddle wrong," she told him. "The strippers named you their queen."

Ed stared in abject shame and horror at the object dangling from Lee's outstretched finger – a plastic silver crown with garish hot-pink marabou feathers stuck to it.

"Oh help…" groaned the Riddler, flopping onto his back on the floor and staying there.

Lee strode across the living room, avoiding the largest piles of glitter, then leaned down and seized hold of his shoulder.

"All right, up you get," she grumbled, trying to shift the glitter-encrusted dead weight. "Just shake it off – no _real_ harm done, but I would kill to see the security footage from last night!"

Realizing he had truly injured nothing but his dignity and maybe part of his reputation, Ed kindly assisted in levering himself up. Every bit of his body hurt and he looked forward to spending perhaps the rest of the day in the shower. He leaned on Lee once she got him standing probably more than he normally would have. She grouched good-naturedly at him as she half-supported, half-dragged him through his bedroom. Hopefully, he blinked at her then glanced at the shower.

"Oh, absolutely not!"

The bathroom door closed behind her retreating back and he heard her cursing the existence of glitter as her voice faded away. Ed turned to his cracked bathroom mirror to see his reflection shaking his head at him – the Riddler didn't even have the wherewithal to cleanse him with a tongue-lashing. Maddeningly enough, he just looked disappointed. Next moment, Ed shrugged out of his beloved green jacket and held it up to stare at it. Even giving it a solid shake over the bath tub didn't do much to remove even a quarter of the glitter. Morosely, he draped it over a towel rack, then emptied his trouser pockets into the sink.


	5. 757 - Penguin Dive

(757) "Did I penguin dive down a hill last night?"

"Where am I?" rasped the entirely hungover voice of Oswald Cobblepot.

He opened his eyes to see rickety furniture, excessive throw rugs, several unusual lamps, and industrial-type windows – everything had a worn, lived-in feel to it.

"You're at my place," Ed replied in his absolutely driest voice, not turning around to face him. "And please, never cause me to haul your carcass up that many flights of stairs again."

Oswald looked down at himself, at his normally-impeccable suit covered in little broken sticks and bits of leaves, various litter. When he turned his head, a paper straw wrapper fell from behind his ear and landed on the floor. He remembered the celebration last night, cracking into the champagne, the calls for toast after toast. Everyone had been so happy last night, so proud to support the Penguin and just glad for something to celebrate. Now, on Edward's couch, he felt like he had been hit by at least one bus, and he couldn't remember if he, in fact, had. Attempting to sit up made his head feel like he had a bag of bricks strapped to it, but he tried twice more anyway.

"I really wouldn't do that if I were you," Ed told him, sounding like his eyes wouldn't stop rolling all the way to the moon. "You have multiple contusions after last night's idiocy… lucky you don't have a concussion… or anything broken with what you pulled."

For once, Oswald listened, letting his head fall back on the ratty pillow on Ed's couch where he had awakened. Every time he breathed, it felt like his ribs were trying to turn themselves inside out. Well, Ed _said_ he hadn't broken anything, but if anything, bruising felt decidedly worse. Of everything he seemed to have injured, though, his pride hurt the worst. Well, his digestive system seemed to have something to say about that. Oswald flinched at the various memories. He had never intended to lose his dignity in that manner again, especially in front of Ed Nygma. Sighing in a long-suffering manner, Edward appeared beside the couch with two cups of coffee in hand. He offered one to Oswald, who just groaned and threw an arm over his eyes as the lights in Ed's apartment assaulted them.

"No?" Ed stated more than asked lightly. "It'll be here, then."

Ed set the coffee mug on the end table with more of a clank than probably necessary and grinned in a rather forced manner at Oswald.

"What… happened last night?" groaned the Penguin, the words half muffled into this filthy jacket sleeve. The collected smells made him want to ralph again. "We were having such a good night, and then I'm afraid I really… can't remember much of anything!"

Removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose, Ed let out the sigh of the century and looked around his apartment in dismay.

"Do you want before or after you loosed an astonishing amount of vomit all over my kitchen, my bathroom, and everything in between?" the Riddler inquired acidly. He replaced his glasses and stared at Oswald over the rims. "In all seriousness, I have no idea where all of that came from… the sheer volume… never seen anything like that."

Oswald felt his cheeks flaming – in fact, his entire body felt like it might be on fire both inside and out.

"Normally, I'm such a happy drunk!" he groaned, squirming on the couch and sending a blanket dropping tiredly to the floor.

Working on his own coffee cup, Ed shook his head, looking incredibly _done_ with the entire situation.

"And you were, right up until you saw that woman with the umbrella," he told the hungover Penguin, who groaned loudly. He continued in a sardonically clinical manner. "You burst into tears, called her Mother, and cried into her imitation fox fur stole until she smacked you with said umbrella. This seemed to flip a switch in your head and you ran away. I chased you until you took off into the park shouting that you were going on an adventure."

The words rang true in Oswald's pounding head as the smells and sights of last night began to dawn on him like little birds. He let out a wet burp, causing Ed's hair to practically stand on end as he dove for the bucket he'd placed at the end of the couch. Oswald scrunched his eyes shut more out of embarrassment than illness as he practically felt the old lady swatting him with the umbrella again. Clearly, last night had been far more eventful than anyone had planned on it being. For lack of anything more constructive to do, he tried brushing some of the leaf litter from his clothes. Ed flinched as the sticks and broken leaves hit his living room rug.

Oswald had a quick thought, and it involved him bouncing arse-over-teakettle down the steepest hill in Gotham's Central Park. It felt like watching the scene on television. He watched his dream self, first in slow-motion and then on repeat like in a cartoon. No matter how many times he went over it, and how his injuries matched, it still didn't quite seem real. His internal organs made an incredibly disagreeable sound as he let his arm flop down from his forehead. Ed sat up straighter, eyeing the bucket in case they needed it again. Staring at the ceiling of Ed's apartment, Oswald let out a sigh that echoed Ed's from earlier. The memory that had started on a mental television screen grew until it hit the size of a drive-in movie screen inside the Penguin's head. He blinked his saggy eyes, trying to make the animated image of his misadventures last night disappear.

"Did… did I penguin-dive down a hill last night?" he asked the ceiling, not Ed.

Ed stared at Oswald over his coffee with a sort of hollow, dead look in his eyes.

"Yes," he answered flatly. "And you made a 'whee' noise."


	6. 605 - Faceburger

(605) "Dude, A DAMN CHEESEBURGER HIT ME IN THE FACE! WTF was I supposed to do!?."

One would think it had to take an event of apocalyptic significance to surprise the likes of Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock of the GCPD. Maybe the sky falling or Satan himself clawing his way up from the fiery underworld – that should do it, right? Even people coming back from the dead, at this point, barely warranted a shrug and a "yeah, what else you got?" Before what had just happened, they both thought so too, but here they stood. Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock stood on the sidewalk in a decent bit of Gotham, staring after the blue VW Bug with nearly identical expressions of marked incredulity. Wild, joyous whooping warbled from the car's open windows.

"Did… that just happen?" Jim dared to be the first to speak.

Ketchup and mustard dripped from Harvey's beard and he pulled off his hat to study the mayonnaise splattered across the brim.

"Looks that way," he deadpanned, blinking at the condiments.

Both men looked up and down the street again, as if in expectation of an equally-bizarre follow-up action, potentially accompanied by nerve gas or some shit like that. No, they observed, traffic flowed like usual, and irritated pedestrians jostled past them on the sidewalk. A passing child pointed at Harvey, observing his condition aloud to her mother. The woman eyed Harvey as if he might have been diseased and picked up her pace, nearly taking the kid off her feet. Jim snickered, Harvey growled, and neither man could shake the distinct feeling of surrealism.

"Could be working with Tetch?" suggested Detective Gordon, not at all serious. In fact, it took all he had to keep his shoulders from visibly shaking. "What? He's wacky enough to order something like this! Tell me, is the ketchup like a hallucinogen or something? No, let me guess… The mustard is a paralytic!"

Harvey let out a long, ragged sight.

"I'll 'paralytic' you!" he shot back, brandishing his hat at Jim and sending flecks of mayonnaise flying in all directions. "Who even _does_ that?"

Jim had to crack another half-smile as he watched the offending Bug disappear into traffic, mostly just glad what had happened moments ago hadn't happened to him. Short story even shorter, four young men in said VW Bug had simply ridden by and thrown a cheeseburger out of the window. Harvey, unluckily enough, had been standing by happenstance in the exact path of the flying fast food. Jim, having not just been hit in the face with a cheeseburger and lacking much else to laugh about in his life, had found the entire thing bloody hilarious! His partner, dripping condiments onto the sidewalk and wondering where his life had gone so wrong, felt far less mirthful about the whole damn thing.

"So, Mr. Bullock, are you interested in pressing charges?" Jim continued to push Harvey's buttons, rummaging in his coat as if he intended to start filing a report, ignoring his partner's glower. "How do you want me to write this down? _Officer failed to duck when cheeseburger ejected from vehicle?_ Or how about this: _officer of the law assaulted with fast food, not donuts_?"

He gave Harvey a shit-eating grin and fiddled with his pen, absolutely intent on writing this down if for no other reason than to give them a good laugh later. The Irishman, more disheveled than usual, had a vein over his left eyebrow starting to twitch both dangerously and hilariously. He watched Gordon filling in the piece of yellow paper, laughing to himself. Trying entirely too hard to keep his face mock-straight, Jim finished a line and then looked back up at his partner.

"And, Captain Bullock, is there a reason you chose not to perform any defensive maneuvers upon realizing the gravity of the… _situation_?" Gordon continued prodding him. He had to forcibly hold in another chuckle as he watched a blob of mayonnaise drip from Harvey's hat to the pavement. "Like, I don't know, raising your hand to shield your face?"

Along with the twitching face vein, Harvey had started to audibly grind his teeth at his partner. Since Jim Gordon had come to the GCPD, he had been nothing but trouble. He, Harvey, had been punched, whacked, hung from a meat hook, covered in glitter, and otherwise encountered more bodily harm and peril than one man reasonably ought to. Now, here he stood, watching the younger man pretend to file a police report that would just end up plastered all over the department for a laugh. Something inside his head made a series of apoplectic popping noises that only he could hear and he went off like a Roman candle.

"Dude! A damn cheeseburger hit me in the face!" he shouted finally, waving his hat around and spattering mayonnaise on Jim. Several pedestrians dodged and pulled faces, trying to get out of the splash zone. "What the fuck what was I supposed to do?"

Jim practically jumped back, but the grin stayed plastered across his smug face – apt, for a man who had not just had a cheeseburger launched at him from a moving vehicle. The flow of foot traffic continued along the sidewalk. People sidestepped and threw side-eyes at the now-deranged police captain who had begun to create quite the scene. Profanity, blasphemy, and several utterances of the word "putz" flew from his bearded mouth and he had yet to cease flapping his arms about. Mustard and ketchup now flew from his facial hair and the hat might take flight in a bit! A couple teenagers had quietly pulled out cell phones and started streaming the hilarity to the internet at large. For his part, Jim chose not to mention that.

Across Gotham, in his living room, Bruce Wayne had his laptop out. A video had popped up in his news feed and he called for Selina upon his moment of recognition. The two watched the computer screen with identical looks of shock, then laughter. The video, entitled "Faceburger" already had 50,000 views!


	7. 303 - Razzle Dazzle

(303) "HE BEAT A GUY WITH NOTHING BUT RAZZLE DAZZLE AND HIS FABULOUSNESS"

Last night had been more than a little bit of hell on wheels. Lee Thompkins picked her head up off her pillow and groaned. She swore hadn't been on a bender like that since her junior year of undergrad! The combined smells of beer, Jagermeister, and her own rank morning breath filtered into her nose and she gulped to keep from barfing right there in her bed. Looking down, she found herself in yesterday's bra and a pair of pajama pants. A quick check and she wrinkled her nose – yes, she still had her panties on, but she wanted out of them as soon as possible if they smelled like the rest of her! Her guts churned and she flopped back into her tangled bedding, wondering how she even got back.

The events of the previous evening came back to her in pieces. She remembered starting the evening with the Riddler. They took in a couple of shows at different clubs, had more than a few drinks at each venue – clearly she had outdone herself on that front. The night had been a delight from what she could remember until, as usual, some punk tried to start something with the Riddler. At first, the upstart had simply found himself faced with astounding levels of "Bitch, please" from the genius. Lee remembered trying to place herself between the two. After discovering neither the Riddler nor Edward Nygma could throw a punch to save their collective lives, she had always tried to play de-escalator. This guy couldn't seem to take the hint though.

"All right, wise guy!" she remembered the Riddler crowing gleefully. "A challenge, on my own home turf!"

The Riddler, "Doc" Thompkins, and their entourage of the night had bounced and come back to his place, where the Riddler had offered the challenger a stage for his idiocy. His club had been alive with delighted onlookers. A victory for either the Riddler or this drunken wannabe would have proven equally satisfactory, Lee had figured. Give them enough booze and let them see some blood, they'd be just fine and she and her partner could continue their evening in relative peace. Not that she had any doubt in the Riddler's abilities, of course. She remembered watching the Riddler stride up and take the stage, utterly sure he had the guy.

He was right of course.

"Many have heard me but no one has seen me," the Riddler had started off shouting directly into the microphone, his voice echoing as he gestured to the challenger. "And I will not speak back until spoken to… What am I?"

The challenger couldn't answer in ten seconds, so the Riddler had got right up in his face. This had proven to be a bad idea when the challenger threw a wild haymaker. Maybe it was luck, but it _looked_ amazing when the Riddler simply shifted back on his heels and watched the fist sail by.

"Wrong, of course," the Riddler told the adoring crowd. "The answer is, obviously, an echo."

Forgetting about riddles, the guy who challenged him in the first place now seemed more interested in starting a brawl. Maybe the Riddler himself had drunk just enough that he felt a bit more physically confident… or maybe he was just that fabulous. Lee remembered being proud of him as the guy had taken swing after swing and he'd simply sidestepped them all. Rights and lefts, a kick or two, the Riddler had avoided each blow as if they were dancing. At one point, Lee could swear he had turned and winked at her! For a man who clearly hadn't seen the inside of a gym since the tenth grade, he sure had moves tonight!

Finally, the drunk had attempted to take the Riddler's cane away from him. Pretending to pull back for all of thirty seconds had bought enough momentum that, next moment, said Riddler… let go. The challenger's eyes had gone wide as his body rocketed backwards. When he landed, he disappeared into the milling crowd and more audible blows landed. The Riddler extended his hand to the Queen of the Narrows and she joined him onstage, smiling down at the assemblage. Together, they watched the challenger being passed along as if crowd-surfing. A back door opened and the crowd unceremoniously flung him out to the filthy, wet streets of Gotham.

"And I hope you have a lovely evening," the Riddler purred over the microphone in the middle of the stage. "Thank you for playing!"

Something thumped out in the living room of her apartment. Lee rolled her eyes, immediately regretted doing so, and forced herself to sit up. The throbbing in her head told her that either someone was about to rethink their life choices or she was gonna get herself thrashed. Hauling herself out of her bed, she grabbed a stiletto heel from last night for a weapon and her cell phone.

"I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE!" she yelled, staggering out of her bedroom ready to murder whatever she saw.

"Oh good, you're awake!" chortled the too-cheerful voice of the Riddler.

Lee emerged into the living room to find him lounging on her couch. His beloved green jacket and dress shirt lay folded on the coffee table with his bowler on top of them. He sat up practically sparkling, reaching for his glasses and looking her over.

"Rough night?" he teased. "If you ever want to try something more difficult than riddles, try putting pajama pants on a squid!"

She dropped the shoe and glared at him, shielding her eyes from the lamplight. Of course, he had peeled off her dress post-victory-celebration, partially re-dressed her, and poured her into bed. How chivalrous of him to take the couch, she grouched internally. She had to acknowledge, though, as she flopped down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder, nursing her hangover… Last night had been incredible otherwise. He had beat a guy with nothing but razzle dazzle and his fabulousness!


	8. 847 - Lost and Found

(847) "Lost gin update. Blackout me found and re-hid the bottle. Left a note to myself saying GOOD LUCK, SUCKER!"

Lee could feel something wrong when she reached her front door – her little koi fish sculpture with the frog on its head had been overturned, leaving her apartment unlocked. She turned the knob and entered her living room with no small measure of caution. Nothing looked broken, but she could see furniture had been shifted about, and as she stepped in further, she saw the same in the kitchen. Someone had clearly been looking for something. Both eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing into her bangs, at what she saw on her couch.

"Okay, what the hell?" she all but shouted at him. "What the exact hell, Ed!"

Those dark eyes blazed at her over the rims of his glasses.

"Not _Ed_ ," he snarled, returning to the piece of paper in his hand. "Although, if the little runt would resurface, it would make _my_ life a lot easier!"

Heaving a deep sigh and resigning herself to getting precisely nothing else done until the situation got resolved and she shuffled him on his way, Lee approached the Riddler. He had a fistful of dirty bits of paper, and he appeared to be having a one-sided quarrel with himself. The Riddler couldn't seem to get Edward to answer him. Looking around, Lee discovered that he had tried to clean up after himself at first, but the destruction increased as he got frustrated. From how he had gone from growling to shouting at himself, whatever had gone on between them appeared to be urgent. Approaching slowly, Lee caught the Riddler's eye and seated herself on an armchair close to the couch.

"All right, just tell me what you were looking for and I'll get it," she told him carefully. She hadn't seen him this agitated in quite some time. "And, maybe, while you're at it, tell me what the hell happened?"

He looked like he had been hit by a truck, more disheveled than she had seen him in such a long time that it honestly scared her a bit. The wild look in his eyes had her considering sneaking off to her bathroom and finding a nice quiet sedative for him. When her air conditioner kicked on, blowing air toward both of them, she realized he smelled quite strongly of gin. Carefully, as if reaching towards a cornered animal, she tried to get the piece of paper away from him. Grumping, the Riddler held it away from her.

"Really, I can help!" Lee insisted, this time grabbing for it and missing again. "What in world could be that important!"

This time, the sigh came from him, and it made his crazy green suit appear to inflate and deflate.

"Lost gin update," he grunted, still in the deep voice of the Riddler, chucking the piece of paper in her direction. "Blackout me found and re-hid the bottle. Left a note to myself saying 'GOOD LUCK, SUCKER!'"

Lee studied the paper and there, in Ed's meticulous handwriting, indeed read the words "GOOD LUCK, SUCKER!" in bright green ink.

"I could swear it's like he's still sore at me about the whole Miss Kringle business," the alternate groused, cracking his knuckles and making Lee glare.

She cocked a meticulously-shaped eyebrow.

"To be fair, so am I," she informed him.

A muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Duly noted," he agreed, glancing at her hands. "Never complimented you on the right hook, by the way."

Lee's glare strengthened.

"Want to test it out again?" she shot back.

The Riddler paled momentarily.

"Not particularly," he admitted. "Although, I'll admit, there's something highly attractive about a woman who can throw a punch like that."

This time, Lee smiled, having heard the change in his voice.

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere," she told him with a half-smile. "All right, Ed, if I just hand you another bottle of gin, will you fix all this and…?"

She gestured around to the gigantic mess he had made of her kitchen and living room.

"I think we can agree to that," an unnervingly combined voice answered her. A rather frightening attempt at a sweet smile followed. "I appreciate you being so… accommodating."

Lee rolled her eyes and patted his knee.

"Right, just don't ever do this again," she instructed, mostly finding the whole thing funny at this point. Next moment, she cocked an eyebrow at him. "Besides, if you want to take me out for drinks, just ask."

The Riddler gave her a crooked grin this time and acquiesced – yes, that would definitely be much easier. Lee got up, strode into her kitchen, and opened her mini-pantry. Of course, he hadn't been able to find something that should have been right in front of his face. _His_ brand of gin sat right beside _hers_ on the shelf and she could just picture him standing there "looking" for it. She picked up his bottle, rolled her eyes to heaven and back, and returned to her up-ended living room. There, she found the Riddler attempting to straighten himself back out and blinking owlishly at her. Apparently, it had been a rough… however long it had been that the two of them had been switching places in the driver's seat.

"I'm gonna go take a hot shower, and _you're_ going to put my apartment back together," she notified him, drawing herself up to her full height and practically gliding to her bedroom. There, she paused and looked him up and down. "Oh, and we're staying in tonight, so put the gin in freezer, will you? I'm suddenly in the mood for a martini… think I _need_ one."

Ed, The Riddler – both men in the same set of eyes watched her bedroom door close, and they heard her grumbling until the shower turned on. They stared at the gin bottle, then shambled over to the freezer. Calling a truce for the remainder of the night – no more blackouts, no more tricks – the duo returned the gin to its proper place.

"What did we ever do to deserve her?"


	9. 973 - Good Night

(973) "I mean besides the fact that someone got stabbed, I still had a pretty good night!"

Lee Thompkins had been in the middle of _attempting_ to have a low-key night in her apartment. As soon as she had first popped open that bottle of her favorite Cabernet Sauvignon, she'd been keenly intent on a lovely evening with Lynda Carter, a soft blanket, luxury pajamas, and her biggest glass. Certainly, her itinerary had no room on it for shenanigans! However, she couldn't really color herself surprised when she heard banging on her front door just a touch after 1am in the morning. Rolling her eyes and bringing her wine glass with her, she hit the pause button and made for the door. Sure enough, there stood Ed Nygma in what she could only call, in medical terms, "a right state."

"We have _got_ to stop meeting this way," complained Lee, hoisting the Riddler's arm over her shoulder and making sure no one saw her half-drag him in her front door. "All right, this time I didn't even see it – what the hell did you start?"

Edward looked like he had fallen off every elevated surface in Gotham at least once, and not only that, he had probably bounced! He had a busted lip, and blood still actively streamed from his mouth and nose. Lee unceremoniously plopped him down on her couch, instructed him to keep his bloody paw – literally – off the remote while she went and fished through the bathroom. Where most people kept a first aid _kit_ , Lee Thompkins maintained a first aid _closet_. She grabbed a few antiseptic wipes, some pads, and two rolls of gauze. This looked like it might take a while, and the sooner she could get him bundled off to her guest room, the quicker she could rejoin Wonder Woman's adventures.

The good doctor returned to her living room to find that the Riddler had dutifully kept his hands to himself, largely due to the fact that he seemed unable to move his hand from his ribs. Lee's eyes narrowed suspiciously, and she parked on the couch beside him, zeroed in on that left hand. He growled like a cornered animal when she reached for it, eyes flashing behind once-more-bent glasses. Far from intimidated, Lee just rolled her eyes at him and reached for his hand, brandishing her astringent wipe. He practically jumped back and flinched at his own movement. She'd wrestled United States Marines to a standstill in her hospital days, so she wasn't about to let a noodle like Edward Nygma stop her!

"Good lord, what have you-" she started, grousing at him as he continued to try and swat her hands away. "Oh my god! How did-"

Her hand clamped around his wrist while her eyes stared him down – just like any Marine, the Riddler had quickly discovered how futile resistance would be. Whether he wanted to or not, he allowed her to steer his hand down to rest on the couch beside his knee. Next moment, Lee let out a sigh half exasperated and half relieved. Whatever Ed had been trying to cover with his hand had at the very least ceased bleeding. The stains on his shirt and his beloved green jacket gave her all the evidence she needed from there and she started yanking his shirt open, barely bothering with the buttons.

"Well, Lee, I mean if you wanted, you could have just asked…" the Riddler insinuated in a heavy purr that reeked of Jäger and caused her to roll her eyes out loud. "Oh… crud."

His paramour had succeeded in ripping his shirt open, pushing his jacket off his shoulders and essentially pinioning his arms to his sides with it, and she stared at his injury wide-eyed. For a short moment, the Riddler had shifted back into Edward Nygma, and he looked like a naughty schoolboy. Blood had stained his shirt and jacket at a four-inch radius in every direction from a two-inch gash in his side and he had jarred it enough, struggling against her, that it had started to ooze again. Lee tried her best to swallow the diatribe she longed to spew at him and keep her bearing calm and medical. Her next sigh shook a bit as it heaved its way out between her lips.

"You don't have to tell me what happened right this second," she tried to soothe him. From the look on his face, halfway between guilty and somewhat relieved, she succeeded. "But I'm gonna want to know everything in the morning, understand me?"

As Edward nodded, Lee stopped fooling with her medical supplies, reached out and touched his face gently – a fierce blush rose in his cheeks as she made him meet her eyes.

"I'm glad it's not worse," she reassured him, stroking back the hair that had gone bananas in the obvious fray and wondering what the hell had become of his bowler. "You scare me to death when you get into things like this, I hope you know."

Ed looked as if he could have kissed her, his eyes lighting up behind his cockeyed glasses. Instead, Lee leaned in and gave him a kiss on his cheek, for once not leaving any purple lipstick on his skin and realizing belatedly that this might be his first time seeing her without any makeup. Next moment, she started in on his side with an alcohol pad and zero warning whatsoever. Ed let out a roar and clamped his arm back, glaring balefully at her taking advantage of his good nature!

"That's what you get for interrupting my night with Wonder Woman!" snapped Lee, wrestling with him and trying not to spill everything everywhere. "I was gonna have a fun night while you had yours, and then you turn up like _this!_ "

The Riddler and Edward warred for internal dominance.

"I mean, besides the fact that someone got stabbed," Ed choked out, keeping his arm defensively around his ribs. "I still had a pretty good night!"

Lee simply looked disgusted as she yanked his arm.


End file.
